Integral Hunter

[Lin Rhea]

A few days ago I started thinking and you never know what will happen when I do that. I have been wanting to forge an integral but make it similar in looks to one of my hidden tang hunters, guard and all. So I played around with some jigs but that did'nt work out too good. So I just tried to start hammering to see if I could. My results are not pretty as far as forging goes, but I think it will make a knife after all the way I intended. Also, I believe I can now forge the blade much closer to shape before grinding. Getting the sequence down is the hard part. Remember, this forged blade looks pretty bad, but this shows how you can actually get away with some rough forging if you start big. By the way, I started with a 1 inch round bar. 5160

Here is the forged blade with some sharpie marks on it.

 

I started rough profiling the blade, still not convinced I could get a blade out of it. Please excuse the burry pic

 

Trying to give it a fair chance to be a knife.

 

 It's starting to get exciting at this point. I believe it will work.

 

Now I know it will work if I dont mess it up.

 

[DANA HOLMAN]

Dang Lin, thats super, i have never thought of doing that, I'll be look for the finshed knife. One step of faith can take you a long way.
Dana

[Kevin Evans]

Very good Lin.
I don't envy you trying to get those scratches off the face of the guard and recosso.  

[kbaknife]

I personally think we pay waaaaaaaaaay too much attention to "forging to shape". I think that profile looks great myself.
We need to leave plenty of "meat" on the outside of our finished knife to allow for decarb in the forge.
(If thou wilst a keen edge win, forge it thick and grind it thin)
And I really want to see that knife when it's done.
There's some serious potential right there!
Did you file the choil?

[Doug Campbell]

I was thinking that same thing after looking at Rodrigo Sfreddo's stuff. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out Lin.

[Lin Rhea]

I can forge pretty close to shape on things I have forged before. I wanted to show that it's better to stop while you're ahead and not ruin it. Eventually, I want to make this in damascus. The blade on it is about 3 1/4 and I estimate it's OAL to be 7 1/2.

Chris (akaboomer) was there in the shop while I was foging. He kept saying,"there's a knife in that". I'm glad I listened.

Karl, I did file up into the choil area. Still got a lot of sanding to go.

[kbaknife]

Might/maybe/could leave just a couple thousandths of guard ABOVE the spine so it sort of has the illusion of being a separate piece?
You could give each area its own finish that way.
And if you did that in Damascus, it will make the pattern not directly blend into the two areas and give it some differentiation.

[Lin Rhea]

I could do that Karl. Just not sure I will yet though. I kind of like the idea of folks seeing it's an integral. But I will probably texture the surfaces differently. That's what I say now. I may be sorry I made this thing.   :D  I probably made things hard on myself. I wanted a challenge, I got one.   :cool:

[kbaknife]

Originally posted by Lin Rhea:
I may be sorry I made this thing.    :D        :cool:  

That's funny.

[akaboomer]

There is a knife in there! Its looking great. It does bring its own set of difficulties, but you are making it look easy. To qoute a master of the integral knife,"Don't think how hard it is. Think how beautiful it will be." Rodrego Sfreddo

Chris

[gudspelr]

Ever since seeing Rodrigo's work, I've wondered about forging one out.  I can only imagine the "challenges" you've got going on there, but it's sure looking good   .  And I'm with Mr. Evans on the finishing of the ricasso and front of the guard being a pain.  But then I'll bet you've got a trick up your sleeve to keep that halo away at that transition....  Thanks for sharing your experiment.


Jeremy

[Lin Rhea]

This does not compare with Rodriggo's work. I can only aspire to do work like his.

I will sand the front of the guard soon but not today.

I performed the final parts of the heat treat last night. Thermocycle, hardening the edge, and draw back twice. All other steps of the forging and normalizing, etc was the beginning of this knife's heat treat.

 

[Lin Rhea]

A couple more shots of this knife while it's still nasty looking. The front and the back of the guard area to show the depth of the material. The guard is about 3/8-7/16 thick. The blade is about a strong 1/8 inch thick.

 

 

[Lin Rhea]

I worked on this knife this morning and got called away so I did not get finished. The guard and handle needs some cleaning and refinement. I snapped a pic of it at this point. It looks like it will be ok. The handle is Hippo tusk I got from a good friend. I should have a finished shot in a couple days. The blade is 3 1/2 inches and the OAL is 8.

 

[kbaknife]

That's gonna be cool!

[DANA HOLMAN]

Too Sweet, Its on my todo list now, Thanks for sharing
Dana

[Lamey]

Lin I love it,  matter of fact i prefer that size hunter, and really like the simple/clean execution.

[Doug Campbell]

Cool, looking forward to those Pro pics, hippo ivory... Nice! Remember when you could get that on 3bay for dirt cheap, ahh the good ol days...  

[Lin Rhea]

Getting close, but have to wait a few days till Chuck can shoot it. I just refined the handle and guard area, but will have to put the pins in and do final clean up. Here's a couple of snap shots.
 
 
 

[Lin Rhea]

I got er done, but the pro shots will have to wait a day or two. But here is some very amateurish shots. It turned out nice. Now she's waxed and waiting.
3 1/2 inch blade and 8 inches OAL The pins are fine Silver and domed.